Simplifying Shipping With A Cloud Application

A revamp of Vornado Air's shipping process was aided by the investment and deployment of a multi-carrier shipping and logistics solution that's built in the cloud.

Eliminating costly inefficiencies is an ongoing task for manufacturers of all types of sizes, and no aspect of the enterprise should escape scrutiny.

Vornado Air, a leading manufacturer of air flow technology products, is a company that sought to grow its business in recent years. As part of that company-wide effort, Vornado Air found it could improve efficiency, save time, and cut costs by revamping its entire shipping process.

That revamp was aided by the company’s investment and deployment of Pacejet’s multi-carrier shipping and logistics technology that is built into Plex Online cloud-based ERP.

“Generating labels and managing the entire shipping process was becoming a time-consuming bottleneck that threatened our ability to grow the business,” said Patti Burns, Vornado Air Vice President, Accounting and Controls. “The integration of the Pacejet solution with Plex Online provides a seamless and easy-to-use solution that eliminated a significant challenge in our shipping process.”

Pacejet’s solution allows Vornado Air to directly connect to a network of shipping carriers, including FedEx and UPS, through Plex Online. Vornado Air now has the ability to interact with carriers directly and electronically via the cloud, giving the company quicker and easier access to information about shipping options and conduct shipping processes.

“It’s the first enterprise shipping application that’s build in the cloud,” said Ron Lee, Chief Technology Officer for Pacejet. “It’s designed for business shippers, but it was architected to take advantage of a cloud environment.”

The Pacejet solution also gives Vornado Air a desirable alternative to a cumbersome shipping process that involved lining up a carrier, procuring a quote, entering information into a carrier’s online portal, and entering the tracking number into its own ERP system. Furthermore, those aforementioned steps often varied based on the carrier being used – leading unwanted complexity and a price that may not be optimal.

“The cloud really gave us a way to change that,” said Lee. “Instead of taking a cobbled-together option and putting it in the cloud, let’s treat it as a network.”

Vornado Air no longer has to research each carrier to determine the best available price, download proprietary software, and print individual shipping labels.

Its improved shipping process allowed Vornado Air to conduct everything within the Plex Online application. The company hits a button to find a carrier, chooses one, and watches as it does all the paperwork and feed relevant information (the cube, the weight, locations, and more) back into Plex.

The solution also handles all of the necessary back-end reporting related to shipping, which allows Vornado Air to pinpoint how it is spending its money on shipping and logistics.

“How much am I spending? Where? You can really fine-tune that,” said Symonds. “And shipping is often where there are hidden costs that can really eat into profits.”